President Obama capitulated Wednesday to the freak show, using the White House podium to address a specious rumor championed by a reality television star, sternly warning the nation can’t be distracted by “carnival barkers.”
And in engaging on an issue that the administration had long viewed as beneath public discussion, Obama makes a bet that he can take the reins as the ringmaster in a political circus that could present long-term political perils for Republicans and convince the American public that he’s the responsible adult in a political arena increasingly filled by sideshow attractions.
Some Democrats worry, however, that Obama waited too long to address the controversy and that his decision to enter the fray will only add stature to a conspiracy cabal whose tenacity and staying power have begun to infect the population at large.
“This has become more than an obsession among the lunatic fringe,” worried one Democratic strategist. “Mainstream voters have started to wonder why the question was still dangling. This all just feels completely personal, the decision not to release it and now the decision to finally relent.”
To say the timing was curious is an understatement — Obama thoroughly stepped on the news that he was nominating a new secretary of defense (Leon Panetta) and CIA chief (Gen. David Petraeus) by making an announcement that he could have made any time in the past two years or in the near or distant future.
But the decision to engage the fringe was ultimately, Democrats said, a personal one. Said a Democrat familiar with the internal discussions, “He just wanted to shut this down so he didn’t have to deal with this any more.”
The White House insisted that the announcement had no political edge, other than a decision to finally put a distraction to rest, the timing set only by the arrival of the certificate last night.
“I am not going to argue the politics of doing this are good — they probably aren’t,” an administration official wrote in an email. “Allowing the GOP primary to devolve into birther mania probably would be better, but the president felt strongly that this was bad for the country.”
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